Video: The D-Day interpretive dance

posted at 4:01 pm on June 6, 2014 by Allahpundit

Wish I could embed it for you but C-SPAN doesn’t allow that. Click the image below and it’ll take you to the entire 50-minute (no joke) extravaganza, replete with a tricolor flyover at the end. People on Twitter are rolling their eyes over it and Noah’s downright irritated, writing, “Instead of a solemn and contemplative remembrance of the costs paid in order to leave ensuing generations a free world, viewers were made to witness a display of cleverness.” I don’t mind the cleverness, though; if someone had composed a piece of music for the occasion, that would also have been “clever” but unobjectionable. Art in tribute to sacrifice is as old as time. What’s bugging some, I think, is the fact that they chose choreography as the medium. It’s well intended, but watching soldier-dancers gracefully pretend-fall where they stand on a beach where men were shot to pieces tends to obscure the magnitude of the sacrifice rather than illuminate it. Imagine a ballet about 9/11 that had dancers swan-diving elegantly from a platform into a pool to represent people jumping from the 105th floor onto asphalt. They’re not trying to minimize the horror, but that’s how it turns out. It’s a matter, I think, of choreography being too close to the actions that inspired it to be properly expressive in this case; it ends up seeming like a too-pale, even faintly ridiculous, imitation of what actually happened. (The mock coffins are a bit much, don’t you think?) Music, a more abstract medium, doesn’t have that problem.

Or maybe there’s just a cultural divide between the U.S. and Europe. Face it, Americans have always viewed dance as the most effete of the arts, not an intuitive choice to commemorate the most momentous battle of the 20th century (in the west, at least). On the continent they may view it differently, in which case this is no different from theater or an orchestral work in honor of the occasion. Shrug. Click the image to watch.

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I visited Normandy and stood on Omaha Beach for a loooooong time just contemplating, specifically Dog Green sector which was the bloodiest sector of the entire beach, I believe it’s also the same landing area depicted in SPR.

It’s amazing that anyone got across the sand alive at low tide much less up the bluffs, Dog Green saw over half the casualties of Omaha just in that one little slice of a very long beach.

I only made it through 5 minutes. That was bizarre. And inappropriate for the occasion on the beach. Perhaps they should have held it in a theater for people to choose to view it instead of part of the official events.

I would watch all 50 minutes if it were only shots of the world leaders’ reactions.

A symphony or painting or film, sure, but dancing around? On the same beach where men were literally ripped to pieces?

First of all, dancing should be a licensed activity issued under the strict oversight of the most serious people.

And second of all, no dance license if you’re gay. That would clean up the whole dance thing for most people, I think, but regardless, no dance remembrances of ungodly horrible carnage please, least of all on the same very plot of ground. Thank you.

My G-d! That dance number was friggin retarded. I thought I coulsn’t be more offended by dance after that pathetic display of socialist nurses dancing on the hospital beds they throw patients out of for the London olympics (now that whole performance was just insane) … but this is whole level worse. Europeans are just idiots. Barky belongs with them. He shouldn’t be allowed back here.

I’m sure the brain trust in the White House has already booked this bunch for this year’s 9/11 ceremony in New York. Curious how will they portray the victims that jumped to their deaths to avoid the fire.

I don’t mind the cleverness, though; if someone had composed a piece of music for the occasion, that would also have been “clever” but unobjectionable. Art in tribute to sacrifice is as old as time. What’s bugging some, I think, is the fact that they chose choreography as the medium.

I think you’re missing the target.

Americans have always viewed dance as the most effete of the arts

^ Americans have always viewed dance as the most self-absorbed, self-serving non-art art. Because it is. It isn’t that, say, ballet doesn’t exist, it’s that ballet is a little shiny star in a massive pile of poop. I think Noah uses “cleverness” there attempting to point to the selfishness of the spectacle. It’s more “look at me” than anything else, from “I’ll pretent to be a tree filled with angst now” all the way back to the original choice for using this for what you are calling an artistic medium.

I wonder also how American the vague disdain for this kind of nonsense really is.

– And music is different. All other “art” is different. Just because it would have been appropriate to compose something and perform it for this occasion, just because something else artistic would have been approprate, doesn’t mean this is. This is ridiculous, and, as Noah described it, belittling. I would add vaguely embarassing.

The jarring thing here is that D-Day was an extremely violent, extremely necessary tragedy. There is zero room for an artsy fartsy interpretation of what happened. It can be expressed in many artistic forms, but not this one. Who, exactly, thought this was a good idea? Are they connected to the Obama de-ministration?

Remember Mel Brook’s History of the World Part I with the Hitler on Ice show at the end?

Yea, it just like that. A f@#$ joke. I wonder how many vets there, so old that they’ll probably never make it back to France again, are glad their compatriots that have already passed away, didn’t have to suffer through this spectacle.

Of all the missteps made by the Obama administration in the swap of five high-ranking Taliban officials (including two wanted by the UN for mass murders) for Bowe Bergdahl, the two worst were ignoring the law requiring Congressional notification … and sending Susan Rice to a Sunday talk show.

Kinda like the First Lady holding up a sign saying “#BringBackOurGirls” on Instagram seems to trivialize the human trafficking of Christian teenage girls.

Although that particular instance wouldn’t have trivialized it quite as much if not for the cartoon-sad face she put on for the picture.

What’s bugging people is that is is stupid and disrespectful. It’s also ghey! ghey! ghey! which obviously appeals to HA.

Blake on June 6, 2014 at 4:45 PM

I was going to raise that point as well, but didn’t want to lose my livelihood and be stoned to death in the street.

But now that you’ve opened that can, does everything have to be ghey with this Regime? I mean first it was Obama limp-wristing the first pitch at a baseball game. What a disgrace that was! Then just yesterday it was Obama “working-out”, and now this.

At least when Billy Jeff knew there were cameras he printed to get weepy after laughing it up beforehand.
jukin3 on June 6, 2014 at 4:26 PM

Ya – he at least pretended to be all solemn and teary eyed for his staged solo walk on the beach to find a few pre-positioned stones to form into a cross in the sand, with a US Navy ship perfectly positioned in the background.
If nothing else, Bubba was a better actor at pretending to respect the military than King Putt.

I bounced through the entire thing. The first almost 30 minutes is a recap of the entire WWII without much focus on D-day itself. Then there was about 5 minutes of memorializing with a somber military band and vets in the crowd. Should have ended there.

But no, then there is a whole bunch of lefty BS about the wonders of the UN and unification of Europe and how there haven’t been any more wars because the UN is so wonderful or something. Then a few more minutes of actual vets and military flyovers.

Yeah, I don’t think any of it was intended to be disrespectful by any means. It just went on too long, failed to actually focus on D-Day itself and had a bunch of BS towards the end. But then its put on by the French. The average modern Frenchy watching probably thought the whole thing was far right-wing propaganda.

My favorite part was around 4-4:15 when Nazi collaborators were mentioned, just because, you know, Vichy! =P

Seriously, I couldn’t click this. My great uncle was a combat engineer at Normandy. His outfit landed in the second wave I think. They couldn’t run for cover. They had to blow obstacles. His unit suffered over 50% casualties. Think of the guy in SPR, who told Tom Hanks “you can’t stay here!” , when they were taking cover behind the steel obstacle designed to rip landing boat bottoms out. The engineers had to stay on the beach under fire. Dance me that.